


Autumn Serenade

by arabmorgan



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Experimentation, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Past Rape/Non-con, Romance, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22242817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: On the run after being accused of crimes he didn’t commit, Sandor ends up playing the hero without even meaning to.
Relationships: Sandor Clegane/Sansa Stark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 85





	1. Chapter 1

As miserable as his entire life had been, Sandor Clegane was still rather attached to it, and so when he realised that the police were about to come calling, he packed a bag and ran.

He ran north, abandoning the car somewhere past the Neck and losing himself in the barrowlands. He might have settled there had he not felt so exposed in the small towns scattered across the plains. He half-expected to see his own too-identifiable face on every screen and in every window, wanted and despised for the rapes and murders he had never committed, and so he continued running.

The wolfswood was wholly new territory to Sandor, much further north than he had ever been, and the cold bit sharply even through his thickest jacket. The left side of his face was number than ever, and he almost feared that it might freeze right off without him even realising.

The sight of the dilapidated structure ahead emerging from between the trees was a welcome relief, no matter how utterly run-down it looked. Short and squat, it looked to have lain untouched for so long that the forest had reclaimed it as hungrily as any other living creature – vines crawled thickly over its surface and ferns sprouted from cracks in its ceilings, their leaves weighed down with a powdering of snow. One corner of the building appeared to have crumbled completely, and he circled the ruin carefully, boots occasionally crunching on bits of rubble and buried shards of glass.

The only entrance he could find was a triangular chasm of darkness caught between the collapsed side of the building and one of the still-standing walls, almost buried beneath the teeming greenery. Frustration churned in his gut at the sight – he hadn’t escaped all the way out into the buggering woods just to die in the middle of nowhere when some half-rotted shack collapsed on top of him.

And yet – the light of the setting sun glinted off something in the darkness within. The silver of dull metal and, it seemed to him, something more.

Sandor moved closer, eyes narrowed, lip curling at the strange scent wafting out into the crisp air the nearer he got to the ruined building, a sort of crackling vibrancy that reminded him of autumn. Whatever was in there smelled like fallen leaves, ripe and earthy, not quite yet beginning to decay.

He blinked and saw it again then – a curious faint shimmer that glowed out of the darkness, a deep orange-red that seemed almost to fade in and out of view.

Damn him and his thrice-damned curiosity.

It was no small task to squeeze his bulk through the jagged entrance without bringing the entire place down around his ears, but the sight that greeted him inside was appalling enough to make him forget all about the struggle he had just endured. There was a cage in the corner, taking up most of the dusty space within and constructed with thick metal bars that were beginning to rust in places, just big enough for a large dog to comfortably inhabit.

But what lay inside was certainly no dog.

It was a woman, curled up tight with her back to him, her bare skin ghost-white and stretched tight over her emaciated frame. It was her hair he had seen, he realized, waves of red-gold and rich copper that gleamed even in the dim light filtering in through the makeshift entrance. Up close, he could also see the bony knobs of her spine that were unhidden by her hair, the jut of her hip bone and the frightening frailty of her upper arm. The sight made him feel sick.

How long had she lain here, waiting for a rescue that had never come? Seized by a terrible, morbid fascination, he stepped closer and crouched down, the sweet scent of pinecones and dry leaves almost overwhelming his senses. Wrapping a hand around one of the bars, he was unsurprised to find it icy cold even through his gloves. It creaked under his touch, brittle with age, and came apart with a single tug, the crack of snapping metal deafening in the near-silence.

Even then, Sandor hesitated. It felt almost sacrilegious to reach in and touch the poor preserved corpse of this woman, but nor did he want to leave her where she had died in despair, imprisoned in this animal cage. He thought momentarily of digging her a grave, even a shallow one, although how he would go about doing that here in the snow-covered wolfswood he had little idea.

Finally, gritting his teeth, he snapped off most of the bars on one side of the cage and reached in slowly, afraid to touch the body, not even knowing _where_ he could possibly touch it. What if she fell apart, simply disintegrated into dust before his very eyes?

Her head lolled against his arm as he lifted her body carefully, but she stayed otherwise intact, all but weightless as he held her to his chest. Her lips were slightly open, her cheekbones sharp and hollow against the planes of her pale face, a startling contrast to the bright curls cascading over his arm. She looked horribly young, and almost like she was merely asleep. He felt unaccountably sad, an emotion he hadn’t realized he still possessed the ability to feel.

The side of her ankle brushed against one of the bars as he moved backwards, and as if in a dream, he felt her jerk in his arms. He saw her lips part further in a soft intake of breath, and the faintest sliver of clearest blue shone through as her eyes opened just a fraction.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he said loudly, and almost dropped her, but she was limp in his arms again, as if he had imagined the entire thing. Adjusting his grip on the woman, he stared down at her ankle, a small part of it freshly blistered and flaming angry red. It defied belief, that she _burned_ when she touched metal, but the proof was right there before his eyes. No wonder she had been curled up like that, as far from the bars as she could possibly get. He took another look at her, wan and skinny and somehow, impossibly _alive_ after so many years had passed that he could barely even see the outer walls of the building beneath the vegetation. Not just years – decades, probably.

He didn’t know what to think. Whatever she was, it surely wasn’t human.

In his younger days, Sandor had been a voracious reader of fairytales and mythology, before he had given the knights and princesses up for motorcycles and alcohol. He still remembered a fair bit of everything, and much to his great shame, there was only one word coming to mind right then, no matter how fantastic and improbable.

 _Fairy_.

She couldn’t abide iron. She was probably immortal. The smell of leaves crushed underfoot after the rain wafted off her as if she had been doused in _eau de autumn_. And she was without a doubt the most exquisite creature he had ever laid eyes on in his entire pathetic life. It had little to do with actual beauty, not with the pallor of her skin and the gauntness of her frame, but an ethereal sort of shimmer that seemed to envelope her, an uncertainty to her presence that made him feel as if she might disappear altogether if he looked away for too long.

Grunting as he ducked back out into the icy cold of the forest with some difficulty, Sandor wondered rather dourly _why_ he had to be the only sorry bastard in the world who would be on the run from the law, only to find himself saddled with an unconscious buggering magical being. Someone _else_ would probably have found a very pretty fairy lady in distress who would be eager to grant a boon or two after being rescued. Some people had all the luck, but not him.

He ended up pitching the tent he had bought during his last encounter with civilisation not too far from the ruin, mostly because it felt odd and uncomfortable to have a completely naked woman in his arms as he trekked through the woods. She probably didn’t feel the cold, or so he hoped, but he certainly felt it for her when he saw gentle snowflakes brush against her pale skin and melt into nothingness.

The tent wasn’t very large, especially when set against Sandor’s larger-than-usual frame, and it was a tight fit considering the woman wasn’t about to shift over obligingly anytime he fumbled around trying to set his pack upright or whatnot. Still, he somehow managed to bundle her up in a thick blanket without completely knocking the tent over from the inside. She looked like a plump, otherworldly burrito, but he simply didn’t feel up to the task of trying to dress her right then. Instead, he lay down and shifted slightly until he was marginally comfortable, with his knees tucked up in a way that reminded him of the fetal curl he had found her in, perfectly placed to stare at the ivory translucence of her skin and the pale blush of her lips.

Here, in the stillness, he could finally see that she was actually breathing – tiny, measured breaths that seemed hardly to stir the air at all – and he found himself wondering if this was how Sleeping Beauty’s prince had felt when he had finally come upon his princess. She was so very delicate-looking, with all her little bird-like bones visible beneath her skin, and Sandor had to hold himself back from reaching out to touch her, to check that she was real beneath her shimmer.

Not that Sandor was anywhere _close_ to a prince, or anyone who might be even remotely acceptable to touch a fey creature such as her. He drew back from the woman with a jerk, blinking and disoriented, unease and a touch of fear roiling in his stomach. Flipping himself over so his back was to her, he stared hard at the dark canvas wall of the tent instead, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.

For a moment, he had forgotten who he was. He had felt sure of himself. He had felt – _right_. He had felt like someone who would not give unconscious women fits of terror if they opened their blue eyes to find him looming over them.

Now, it just felt like madness – or magic. Fists clenching till his short nails dug into his palms, he squeezed his eyes tight shut and tried to sleep, but the presence at his back was a relentless pressure against him, almost physical in its force. It felt like she was calling to him, a gentle siren song that sank deep into his bones, imbuing him with a desire to care for and protect. Groaning, he turned so that he was facing her once more, still pale and unmoving. Her face was a blur before him as he fell asleep, like a mirage found only in the heat waves rising off the tarmac, but the strands of bright hair in the corner of his eye remained crystal clear, flickering like flames.

* * *

Sandor remained camped there for three nights.

Now that he was far enough in the north, far enough from the nearest town and the nearest police force, he felt safe enough to settle for just a while. He practiced building a small fire before boiling some snow in a pot. He read up on setting snares, although he wasn’t sure how desperate he would have to be before resorting to eating a furry creature he would have to skin with his own hands. He trekked a few miles in each direction as the fancy struck him, exploring the lay of the land and hopefully making enough noise to avoid encountering the wolf packs that gave the forest its name.

And on the fourth morning, when he opened his eyes, so did she.

Not knowing what to give her, he had fed her nothing but droplets of cold water on her lips, but she had filled out over the past days anyway. Flesh reappeared on her bones and erased the shadowed hollows of her body. Her cheeks turned pink, the weak translucence of her skin gaining the gentle luminescence of absolute health. She seemed to him almost like a carving in repose, so unreal was her serene perfection.

Despite her improved appearance, it was still a shock when she awoke. He had gotten into the habit of lying in each morning, just a quarter of an hour or so spent watching her as the forest fluttered to life beyond the walls of the tent. Her breathing had deepened as her health returned, and her scent had changed too – she smelled of fresh peaches and green grass now, of wet earth and ozone. There was something about her very presence that soothed him, and for those few minutes before the day started, Sandor allowed himself to pretend – that he wasn’t a wanted man, that he was worthy to even be in her presence.

He almost didn’t realise at first when she awoke – just like that, without any excessive lash-fluttering or a single moment of disorientation. She simply opened her eyes, blinked, and looked over at him, her gaze as clear as gemstones. He would have flinched away had he not felt so completely pinned in place, frozen with a sudden fear that he was quite unaccustomed to feeling.

“I remember you,” she said slowly. “You saved me.” There was an unsettling dreaminess to her voice, like she wasn’t all there. It didn’t sound like madness, just something decidedly inhuman. For a moment, she seemed to fade from his sight like a spectre vanishing with the dawn, and then she was whole before him again, sitting up with the unrolled blanket draped heavily over her shoulders with a strange sort of regality.

He sat up as well, slowly, so she wouldn’t think he was trying to do anything foolish towards her, but if his movements alarmed her in any way, she certainly didn’t show it. She only looked at him endlessly with her deep, empty eyes, her blinks slow and cat-like.

Finally, she looked away. “You ought not to have bothered,” she said, in that same calm, detached tone, and the sheer shock of her words shook Sandor free from the hypnosis of her presence.

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded, shaken and inexplicably angry, his heart beating a pounding gallop in his chest. “You were in that cage for years, not even _dying_. You’d rather lie like a corpse in there forever than be free? You like the idea of eternal torture, woman?”

The woman – the _fairy_ , he thought, although he still felt like a damn fool with that word in his head – met his eyes again, and this time she smiled, just a small curl of her lips that made her look more dazzling than ever. “No,” she agreed. “I am glad to be free. The essence of the forest – I had almost forgotten how that felt like. I thought I would die in that cage, senseless and powerless, but now you have given me a last taste of beauty before I go. For that I thank you.”

Sandor rubbed at his eyes with the heel of his palm, blowing out a loud, gusty breath of exasperation. It sure was fitting, wasn’t it, that he had somehow gone and saved himself a buggering suicidal fairy. Absolutely wonderful.

“Just – tell me why,” he growled, brows furrowing as he glared at her. “Why you were in that cage, and why you’re so damned keen to off yourself. You have _magic_ , for the gods’ sake.”

For the first time, something sparked in her eyes, and what he saw in them was dark and unkind. “For science, they said,” she replied, and there was an edge of spite to her voice, like she was laughing at him and calling him a fool in her mind. “They did many unspeakable things for science. But you would know that, wouldn’t you – you know how cruel men can be. And as much as I might wish it, magic cannot bring back the dead.” She smiled again, this time pitilessly, as her hand came up to caress his burned cheek in a mockery of kindness.

Sandor flinched away from the icy imprint of her thumb against his lips, anger and fear warring within him as he tried to back away from this cruel-eyed, flame-haired goddess, but there was nowhere to go within the confines of the tent. Shooting one last look of horrified fury over his shoulder, he stormed out into the wolfswood, leaving her sitting calmly in his wake, the ripeness of summer trailing out of the open tent flaps.

 _I shouldn’t have taken her. This was a mistake._ She _was a mistake_. A tangle of thoughts resounded through his mind as he crashed through the undergrowth, panting and wide-eyed like a fleeing prey animal. He didn’t quite know why her words had spooked him so, but there had been something about the way she had looked at him, with that cold amusement in her eyes, as if she had seen into his mind and plucked out every juicy thought within. He knew how to deal with fists and weapons, but to feel like his very soul had been laid bare by those blue depths – this was the first time in a long while that he could ever remember choosing flight over fight.

He was only a hundred feet or so from the tent before a low snarl off to his right brought him to an abrupt halt, cracking through his bone-deep fear and setting every sense on high alert as he whirled to face the new threat. He curled his fingers into fists, wishing he hadn’t lost his head like a massive fool and run off without bringing a single thing with him.

The wolf was neither hard to spot nor particularly large, but Sandor wanted nothing to do with it all the same. It stood amongst the leaves of a large, spreading bush, its grey pelt dappled with shadow, lip peeled back to reveal formidable teeth. Ever so slowly, he drew himself up to his full height, keeping his eyes fixed on the steady amber stare even as he slowly backed away, hearing nothing but his heart thudding in his ears.

The wolf took a single step forward and he froze, a litany of curses running through his mind. He didn’t know what he’d do if it followed him back to camp. He was pretty certain he didn’t have a weapon lethal enough to handle a full-grown wolf, and was it even _legal_ to kill wolves in this area? It was an odd thought to pop into his mind, considering the sheer number of illegal things he had already done before.

“She won’t harm you,” came a soft voice from just behind him, followed by a gentle touch to his elbow that made him jump rather violently. It was as if she had simply materialised by his side, and perhaps she had. He turned his head ever so slightly, seeing a bright flash of hair and the pale blur of bare skin in his peripheral vision. Ahead, the wolf cocked its head as well, triangular ears twitching as it glanced at his new companion, and then it turned and slipped away, out of sight in the blink of an eye.

Letting out a breath he hadn’t known he had been holding, Sandor turned fully to the fairy, who was blinking out at the forest with a faraway gaze, her expression soft and sad. Even lost in her thoughts with her hand still resting against the crook of his elbow, she looked far more alive than when he had last seen her in the tent, mocking and callous. She appeared to have abandoned the blanket altogether, and a thin wreath of ice-blue flowers twined through her hair atop her head, a gauzy shift of palest green upon her body. It left very little to the imagination, but Sandor somehow found that it felt almost blasphemous to even think of looking at her with desire.

“Did you do that? Make the wolf go away?” he grunted, looking down at the top of her head and fighting the urge to finger the strands of bright copper fluttering in the breeze.

Blinking, she looked up at him. “I did ask her to leave,” she acknowledged, and then she looked at him quietly for a long moment, her expression unreadable, before finally she spoke again. “I should not have spoken to you so, earlier. You did me a great kindness by taking me from that prison. It has been…a long time. A long time even for me. My family is gone, but I find that the taste of freedom is sweet even when enjoyed alone.”

With a small, bitter smile, she reached up and laid her hand against the side of his face again, but this time the gesture was an apology. He swallowed, looking dumbly down at her with his arms hanging foolishly by his sides. Some part of him wanted to take her into his arms, not lewdly, but simply to make sure that she was actually _there_ , a rather scantily-clad fairy princess standing barefoot in the snow.

“Not alone,” he said roughly, and it was all he could force out before his throat seemed to close up. Glaring determinedly out at the trees with vague annoyance, that same motion pulling his face from her soft touch, he almost missed the quiet half-chuckle that sighed from her lips.

“You are kind,” she said, her voice gaining that airy, distant quality once more. Perhaps she was lost in her memories, he thought, and she surely had many of those. For her sake, he hoped that there was more good than bad in her head, although he supposed he knew well enough how even a single bad memory could taint one’s life forever.

He turned to look at her once more, shifting to face her fully with his gloved hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunching slightly against the cold. “So what are you going to do now?” he asked. “Hope you’re not still thinking of leaving all this behind. The woods, the critters. The freedom. You don’t have to stay here. The world’s a big place – the biggest damn place there is. There’ll be something out there for you.”

He didn’t want to say anything as trite as _happiness_ , but he knew it would surely be something more than the death she had been thinking of. He also didn’t know where all this bullshit spewing from his mouth was coming from, because he sure as the seven hells didn’t believe there was anything out there in the world for _him_.

“I don’t know.” She stared back at him, a spasm of something raw and awful crossing her face, perhaps grief. “I don’t know how to be alone.” She blurred before him, as if a strong gust of wind might blow her away, and he ached to grab on to her – but he didn’t know if she would slip through his fingers when she flickered like that, and he didn’t think he wanted to find out.

Instead, he drank in the sight of her, blurry at the edges before solidifying once more, and he wondered. If he had the balls to say it, and if it wasn’t the stupidest idea he had ever had.

“You could always stay until you figure it out. I’m not going anywhere anytime soon,” he muttered, and the heat crawling up his neck felt more like hoping than wondering.

The warmth of her smile was like the sudden relief of finding shelter from a snowstorm. “Perhaps,” she agreed, and then, softly, a concession – “You can call me Sansa.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! The first draft actually involved Sandor being a werebeast (werehound?) but for some reason that I don't remember, it just didn't work out.


	2. Chapter 2

Touching Sansa when she guttered in and out of sight like a dying candle was just as unnerving as Sandor had thought it would be. She went from something to nothing and back to something again beneath his fingers, in a way that his mind simply could not comprehend. It felt like having his phone continuously slip out of his fingers, and he was helpless to stop it from falling.

Of course, he didn’t touch her often. Just – sometimes. In the nights, when she hummed and drew nearer to him, lifting his arm and scooting into the curve of his chest, even though he wasn’t sure if she even felt the cold. In the days, when her eyes grew glassy with recollection and he would have to steer her gently by the shoulder, palm against her scapula and thumb resting against the slender column of her neck. He wondered if he would ever stop being afraid of breaking her, those delicate bird bones that felt liable to snap if he held on too roughly.

“You dream at night,” he muttered one day, breaking the silence as they journeyed ever further north. “You know that, right?” The question settled conspicuously between them, hard and uncomfortable, and quite suddenly he regretted saying anything at all, but it was too late. He saw the slight hitch in Sansa’s step, standing out against her usual glide across the ground, so smooth was her pace.

“You are kind to call them dreams.” The bitterness had returned to her voice, that faint mocking edge that always stirred unease within him. “I slept for years before you found me, slept and waited for death. I felt the seasons pass as my wounds healed, but still I see them in the darkness when I close my eyes, as clear as day. They always used iron, every time. I heard my brothers scream before their spirits fled. Robb wept as he choked on his own blood, and I heard that too. I heard everything.”

An involuntary shiver shook his shoulders, and for once he was glad that she walked ahead with her eyes fixed forward. She was so very quiet in her sleep, curled up beneath his arm more often than not, her occasional murmurs whispers that he heard only if he lay awake, that he had never thought to call them nightmares.

“I shouldn’t have –” he started, gruff and apologetic, but she spoke over him as if she had not heard him at all.

“Death would be a release,” she said, her voice soft and flat, “but I did not even get that.”

“Don’t say that!” he barked, alarm running through him, too agitated to mind his tone. His voice rang out in the cold, clear air, and the quiet that followed felt absolute. It was enough to shake him out of his shock, and he hesitated, wondering what in the seven bloody hells he was supposed to say in a situation such as this, and if there even _was_ anything he could say to help.

“Your family,” he started, fumbling and loose-witted in the face of her indifference. “They would’ve wanted you to live. They would’ve been proud of you for surviving.” The words felt clumsy and insincere on his tongue, and for the first time he cursed his own roughness. He was familiar with anger and violence, and even, at times, the catty spite of women that could cut as deep as a knife when wielded right, but he did not know how to speak to someone who would see the Stranger coming and walk forward gladly to meet him all the same.

Sansa slowed at that and turned, her skin luminous in the gentle dappling light of the deep woods, the blankness of her expression made all the more frightening by the delicate perfection of her form and the feelings they engendered deep in him. Even then, her heart crushed by the weight of her grief and his swollen with angry concern, he felt endlessly drawn to her, an unexplainable need to stay close that went quite beyond his latent desire to have his way with her in the snow.

“You know nothing about what my family would have wanted, and nor do I,” she said simply, almost pityingly, as if she thought his attempts to soothe her laughable.

Sandor bristled at that, annoyance roaring up again at the dullness of her voice. “So why are you still here?” he all but shouted, the cold air scraping over his throat as he sucked in a fortifying breath. “Trying to irritate me so much I kill you myself, is that it? Don’t have the guts to hang yourself and need me to drag you screaming and kicking to the noose? Would that make you feel better? Saw my face and thought, _yes, this big ugly bastard will do nicely_?”

He hardly realised that he had taken three large steps forward and was shaking her roughly by the shoulders, her bare feet scuffing unsteadily in the snow, fingers curving over his wrists for support as she stared up at him with those blue, blue eyes. And then she dimmed, like she was melting away at the corners, slipping from his grasp for just a moment, and he flinched back like he had been stung.

“Gods,” he gasped, chest heaving from the sudden demise of his anger. Through her shift, he could see that she was unmarked, without even a trace of redness where he had gripped her, thumbs pressing into her skin, but his hands shook all the same. The sights he had seen flashed to mind unbidden, unseeing eyes and bloodied lips, blue-black marks around dead white necks – and Gregor. Always Gregor, with his merciless hands.

It had been years and years, yet he could still feel those hands on the back of his neck, dragging him across the ground like he weighed nothing.

“I –” The apology died stubbornly on his lips, but he backed away anyway, sick to his stomach at the sense-memory of her slight form trembling in his violent grip. _I’m sorry_ , he thought, although the words stuck in his throat, and again the urge to flee shot through him.

“Don’t,” Sansa said quietly. He barely heard her, and yet there was a power to her voice that froze him in his tracks, leaving him glaring at her motionlessly, seething and terrified all at once. There had been layers to her voice, a single word multiplied again and again on top of each other until the force of it exploded out from that one soft syllable.

_Magic_ , he realised, cold fingers trailing down his spine even as Sansa turned and walked away. This time, it was a knowing rather than a vague inkling, but he followed after her all the same. He was a dog on a leash, and there was nothing else he could do.

She walked for hours without stopping, leaving only the faintest prints in the snow, and he trudged after her, yearning and wary all at the same time. He watched her as he always did, marveling at her very existence, at the way her hair trailed long and thick down to the small of her back, almost but not quite obscuring the curves flaring beneath the translucent shift. It was dizzying, the protectiveness that surged within him, the need to see that small spark of a smile in her eyes again – but also the realization that perhaps it was just magic, all of it, and did that make every part of it untrue?

The moon had risen when Sansa’s steps finally slowed, and then stopped altogether. Turning, she drew close to him, as luminescent in the night as in the day. Her hair shone like the embers of a fire, flickering crimson and coral and topped by her floral crown of palest blue, but she stood solid and substantial before him.

“It is true that I often think of death,” she said slowly, and the loss in her eyes was enough to make Sandor keep the sneer that rose unbidden off his face. “My family is gone, and this world holds nothing that brings me joy. Perhaps you are right and there is still something out there for me, but I find I do not have it in myself to embark on that search.”

She paused, arms folding across her stomach as if to hold herself together, shoulders curving inwards for the first time. “But you…you saved me when you had no cause to, and in your presence, I feel – soothed. I feel that one day, I might be content again. You are not a very happy man, but on occasion you make me forget that to cease would bring me happiness. That is why I am still here, and I apologise for the hardships I have caused you.”

Sandor closed his eyes, letting his breath out through his nose in a long sigh. She was no longer looking at him when he opened them again, instead standing hunched with her eyes lowered, fingers clenched in the silky fabric of her shift.

“Alright,” he sighed again, and tugged her forward by one shoulder. She was very still for a long while when he drew her into a tight embrace, and then he felt her arms loosen from around her middle. She reached around, clutching at his thick winter coat, knuckles digging into his back as she unraveled against his chest. Even through his gloves, he could feel the tremble of her shoulders and the yielding firmness of her flesh beneath his palms, and all at once she felt more real and more human to him than she had ever looked.

Drawing back and tilting her chin up to face him with one finger, he was almost relieved to see the dryness of her eyes instead of tears. “You haven’t caused any hardships,” he grumbled. “Apart from those first few days where you were laying around like some rubbish helpless fairytale princess.”

Her smile, when it came, was slow and amused, a dawning that softened the stark whiteness of her features. Without thought, he traced his finger in a slow line along her jaw, sliding his hand beneath the heavy weight of her hair to cup the back of her neck. She was studying him, he realised, her fathomless eyes seeming for once to look right at him instead of inside him, and something in his gut lurched at that.

The part of him that was afraid wanted to shake her again, to ask her what the bloody _fuck_ she thought she was doing messing with his head. Another part of him knew that she was only heartbroken and lonely, and desperately, achingly vulnerable. But every part of him wanted her – to have, to hold, to protect, to cherish – and he didn’t know how much of it was truly _him_ , but he leaned down and pulled her closer, and pressed his half-burned lips to hers anyway.

She was soft, soft beneath his lips and beneath his hands – that was his first thought, and one that never quite went away no matter what happened between them. Her lips were gentle against his, tentative – he felt her first, shocked intake of breath when he kissed her, and then she relaxed, her mouth chasing his with all the delicate timidity of a fluttering hummingbird. She felt more fairy-like than ever, enchanting and unreal beneath his coarse grip.

One of his hands trailed down her back and settled against the base of her spine, tugging her ever closer, so that there was hardly an inch of space to be found between them. He could barely feel her body against his through all the layers he was wearing, and he thought that perhaps it was a blessing after all, for it spared her the indignity of having him grind against her like a beast in heat.

When his tongue swept into her mouth, rough and greedy, Sansa let out a quiet, quivering moan, her back arching further as she pressed up into him, her slender hands curled tight against the front of his coat. Right then, quite bizarrely, Sandor thought not of his swelling animal lust but of his small, nurtured hope that she would find contentment, now and for the rest of her long, long days.

* * *

He often awoke to Sansa watching him as he slept, sometimes tracing the twisted scar tissue of his burned side, lightly enough that he never stirred from the brush of her fingers. It made him feel self-conscious and angry in turns, but he could never find it in himself to jerk away from her touch. It was, in the end, far better than the mornings when she turned away from him, or simply stared blankly upwards with her faraway gaze, lost in the joys and horrors of the past.

“You are just so – human,” she murmured when he asked her why, fingers trailing along the side of his scalp where the hair didn’t grow. “So fragile, so easily hurt, and yet you survived. You live on, while my family does not. I am fond of you, but the unfairness eats at me from the inside.”

He caught her wandering hand in his and held it, watching her uncertainly.

“I was young when we were taken,” she said, and he blinked, startled by the non sequitur. “Older than you, to be sure, but that counts for little in a life such as mine. I had never even been kissed. They tried to breed half-human children on me. An impossibility – I could have told them if they had ever asked, but by that time I think they did not care. You and I, we are not wolves and dogs, no matter how alike we may seem.”

Sandor swallowed, and found that his hand was shaking with an emotion that wasn’t purely anger, but she did not pull away. She shimmered for just a moment, his grip tightening on nothing, and then her small, bony hand was there again. Her eyes met his, and there were no smiles hidden in its depths.

“They locked me down with iron cuffs every time – my neck, my wrists, my ankles. I would have accepted any of their tortures twice over if only they would take the iron away. They cut me open more than once to see how I worked inside, but I hardly remember any of it. I only remember how it felt to have my skin bubble and melt away beneath the cuffs, the agony of it, and the relief when enough flesh burned away so that the iron did not touch me constantly. I promised to be good at first, that I wouldn’t try to escape, but later I begged. I begged for them to just cut off my hands and feet, but they never did.”

She was silent for a long time after that, her eyes glazing as her mouth worked soundlessly, and Sandor held her as gently as he knew how, his large hands trembling spasmodically against her back. All the while, the fury rose in him, the desire to make these people hurt as much as they had hurt this gentle, dead-eyed creature, who drifted back and forth between her desire for life and death.

Finally, she repeated, with a vague tone of astonishment in her voice, “I was young then.” She chuckled, low and hoarse. “I suppose I still am, but I no longer feel it. Except – except when you kissed me that night. I think you brought her to life again then, the Sansa who once believed in happiness, just for a little while. It felt like a lovely dream, to have a first kiss under the stars, just as I’d always imagined.”

“Sansa,” he whispered, just for the sole pleasure of saying her name, as something hot and painful burst in his chest. Drawing her face up to his, he kissed her for the second time, slow and languid despite the racing heat of his blood. He was exquisitely aware of the way she sighed sweetly each time he drew away before diving back in, losing himself in the clean, fresh scent of her skin. She smelled of summer that morning, the crispness of sun-dried linen and sun-baked dirt, and he buried his nose in her neck and thought that he wouldn’t even have needed magic to love her.

She ran her fingers absently through his hair as he dozed, his head pillowed upon her breast, breathing her in as her heart beat its calm, rhythmic cadence against his good ear. He thought of his fast-dwindling supplies and the ragged condition of his clothes, and the very fact that he could not live out the rest of his days in a tent in the damn forest. And then he thought about how he understood, without really knowing how, that Sansa would never leave these woods, her home, where she belonged.

Whether she _couldn’t_ or simply wouldn’t mattered little, for even if she could he knew she never would.

That day, he angled due east all the same, making for the ruin of the once-great castle of Winterfell, and more importantly, the bustling winter town sitting at its foot. Sansa said nothing of the abrupt change, that day and all the days that followed, but sometimes he couldn’t help slanting a narrow-eyed glance at her, wondering if she had the ability to simply pick the answers right out of his head, or if she had chosen the ease of deliberate ignorance.

In the nights, he held her and listened to her whimpers, tenuous threads of sound that whistled out under her breath as she curled tighter into herself, almost drowned out by the backdrop of chirping crickets and howling wolves. He held her and thought of their inevitable end, and wondered if it would be better never to kiss her again, or to kiss her every single day until they parted. Which would hurt him more, and which would hurt her less?

“Don’t suppose you’ll be coming with me when we reach the town,” he said gruffly one day, when he could put it off no longer. He glared down at his little circle of uncovered dirt, stones and kindling, shoulders rigid, trying to focus on striking the match in his hands rather than the sudden lack of movement off to his right. He could already feel his anger building, a dull burn that heated his skin in preparation for the inevitable fallout, the tears and the pleading. The magic.

He refused to turn when she padded noiselessly over to him and crouched, taking a seat right in the snow, near enough for their shoulders to touch. “Will you come back?” she asked quietly. She didn’t sound surprised, but there was a deadened sort of hopelessness in her voice that suggested she already knew what his answer would be.

“No,” he said after a moment, and it was a struggle to speak even that single word. “I’ll be staying, unless they have wanted posters of me everywhere.” He barked out a laugh, ugly and forced, and looked away, out at the quiet of the forest that no longer unnerved him with its unfamiliarity.

“It’s not so very far from the wolfswood,” Sansa said after a moment. “I could visit you. We used to do that, go out to human towns on the darkest nights – I hardly even remember why. I think we were just curious about all of you. Bran…oh, he would climb from roof to roof like a squirrel, the higher the better.” Her voice had turned soft and distant in the way it always did when she spoke of the past, but when Sandor turned to look at her, he found her watching him too, present and aware.

He took in the wide ring of white around her blue eyes and the badly-concealed quiver of her chin, and he knew then that she was lying, although she probably didn’t even realise it herself. She would never again enter a human dwelling, he thought, not even if he was in it. She had been hurt far too much in one to ever feel safe within a roof and four walls again.

“No, you won’t,” he said flatly, and he felt her recoil from the truth in his words.

“Please,” she said weakly, and reached for his hand. He didn’t know what she meant, if it was a _Please don’t go_ or _Please stay_ or _Please come back_ , but before she could touch him he stood in a flurry of dirt and snow and tossed his lighter into the circle of dry twigs. He had to leave, before she had hold of him once again, his heart and his hand both, or before he did something horrendous, like hit her or kill her or kiss her.

“Don’t follow me,” he growled, ferocious, and he left her sitting in the dark beside an unlit fire pit, the tent still so many pieces of canvas and metal in his pack.

He didn’t go far, only paced round and round, catching occasional glimpses of Sansa still sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, her shift a pale glow in the darkness. He had thought that perhaps she might start crying when he stormed off, but she only sat pale-faced and dry-eyed, her cheek against her knee and a single blue petal of her flower crown at her feet, like a tragic figure of myth come to life. In some dim part of his mind, he realised that in all the time he had known her, he had never seen her shed a single tear.

Gods, he hated her. He had never let anything tie him down before – Sandor Clegane went where he would, when he would – and now this sad little fairy was making him want to set down roots in the middle of buggering nowhere like some sort of wildling savage.

With a roar of rage, he slammed a fist into the nearest tree, the pain shooting hot and sharp down his arm and jolting his shoulder. Without really knowing how, he found himself on his knees, doubled over on himself as a strange, choked sort of keening scraped its way out from the back of his throat. He was distinctly aware that he sounded like an animal in despair, but the noise wouldn’t stop coming as he rocked back and forth, eyes tight shut.

It was fitting, he thought, considering he _felt_ like an animal – one that was trapped with no hope of escape, and the more he tried to break free the more it hurt.

He flinched away when Sansa laid gentle hands on his cheeks, but her grip was firm, exerting inexorable pressure until he was looking her in the eye. “Sandor,” she murmured, her expression very solemn as she studied him. “You saved me. You’ve done enough. You have your own life to live now. I understand that.”

He shook his head hard, and it was only when he felt wetness on his cheeks that he found he was crying. “You know what you’ve done to me,” he spat, venomous, and felt her fingers twitch slightly upon his face. “How can I leave after you’ve made me love you? I don’t even have anything to go back to – no family, no friends, a million warrants out for my arrest. You’re cruel, you know that? I’ve never met anyone worse. I have to go, I _have_ to. I can’t stay out here forever, but gods, I don’t want to. _Gods_ , you and your magic…”

He slumped, shaking, and Sansa caught him, holding him to her wordlessly as the snow melted beneath him and seeped into his clothing.

“There is no magic in the world that can create love,” she said after a long while, and her voice was taut with some unnamable emotion, “or if there is I do not know of it. It is true, I can influence your thoughts in many ways, but love…no, that is beyond us.” She brushed his hair away from his face and bent, and he felt the numb pressure of her lips against his burned side. It made him feel like weeping again.

“I am sorry for hurting you so, but this does not have to continue. You only need to forget,” she said, and the melodic layers crept into her voice once more, seeming to fill the air around them, pressing down into Sandor as he startled and tried to rise. “Forget me, Sandor. This will be my pain to bear alone.”

He felt dazed and heavy, like he was just waking after a night of heavy drinking. “Sansa, no,” he tried to say, the horrible realisation of what she was doing dawning on him in an instant. _Not like this, please_. He wanted to see her once more, twice, for the rest of his life.

“Forget me,” she whispered thickly.

He thought of the brightness of her smile when it reached the darkest depths of her eyes, and the warmth of her arms around his neck, and the last sight he had had of her, moonlit and lonely. He had never even gotten to hear her laugh.

Something wet fell on his cheek, but by then he was already unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact! This story was completed in Dec last year and I didn't actually plan it out while writing (I only had the 'Sandor finds fairy!Sansa' concept in mind) so I was kind of shocked when the end of this chapter happened the way it did lol.


	3. Chapter 3

Heaving the last clod of dirt and snow into the slightly sunken grave, Sandor tossed the shovel down and wiped at his brow, damp with sweat despite the perpetual chill in the air. He gave himself only a moment to catch his breath, and then picked up the shovel once more before heading for the small shed beside the sept to stow it away. It was getting dark – unreasonably early in his opinion, as it ever did in the north – and he wanted to stop by the pub for dinner before heading home.

It was a mundane life, far more mundane than he was used to after years of adrenaline and violence, but somehow he had taken to it with more ease than he had believed possible. None of the townsfolk cared overmuch about his past as long as he was honest and made no trouble, and the constant stream of tourists who kept the winter town alive had eyes only for the ruin of Winterfell towering over them and the little trinkets that the souvenir stores sold.

For the first time he could remember, he felt almost _safe_.

He had been surprised by how much work there was to be done in such a small place, but there seemed to be no shortage of odd jobs for a man of his build and strength, from the macabre task of gravedigging to the more tedious duty of carrying crates. He wasn’t picky – he was, after all, used to being the hired muscle, except the jobs he took these days didn’t typically call for him to risk his neck or anyone else’s.

On the few days that he couldn’t find work, he either took the day off or ostensibly went out into the wolfswood to hunt, although he tended to enjoy the peace and quiet of the forest more than any kills he did make. Eight months had not been enough to eradicate his general unease around other people, even the kind folks of the winter town, and he found that he breathed easier in the fresh, crisp air of the wilderness. Some days he simply walked out empty-handed and wound his way through the trees, listening to the constant birdsong through the beanie pulled snugly down over his ears.

For all the warnings he had been given about the wolfswood and its namesake, there was a kindness to the place that Sandor had never experienced elsewhere. He had struggled through this very forest in search of a new lease of life, and sometimes he still felt as if something in it was watching over him, a sort of comforting otherworldly awareness that washed over him like a warm cloak.

The sky was full dark when he left the pub, and he was navigating by the light of his phone by the time he reached the tiny brick cottage he now called home. One day, he’d have to construct a whole damned streetlamp out here on his own, or gods knew when the council would actually finish lighting the whole town. The winter town was an amalgamation of backwater living and modern amenities, and many locals still burned animal fat in their lanterns, from the wild creatures that they killed for food. Very little went to waste here in the cold north, and it suited him just fine.

His hand on the door, he turned to look out at the eerie darkness of the woods, habitually scanning the area for any danger or prying eyes, but he saw nothing, only a strange pale flash somewhere among the trees, and then a flicker of red that looked almost like flame. Squinting, he watched that spot for a moment longer, but everything was still. _An animal_ , he thought, and disappeared into his house, locking the door behind him.

It took another year for the Lannisters to find him.

That was far longer than Sandor would actually have expected them to take if he had, indeed, been expecting them at all. But he had somehow forgotten, in the mad rush to evade the authorities, that running had meant leaving the Lannisters’ service, and no one left the Lannisters’ service alive. Maybe he had thought that his years of loyalty would count for something, or perhaps being framed for the shit that had gone down at Saltpans had shaken him into stupidity – at this point, he could hardly remember.

At this point, it hardly mattered.

There was a bullet buried somewhere in the meat of his shoulder, and he was bleeding all down one side like a stuck pig. It was his left shoulder, thank the gods, and at the very least he wasn’t out in the open any longer, presenting a lovely over-sized target for any waiting sniper. He was no northerner, who could spin around blindfolded a dozen times in the middle of the woods and still find his way out before lunchtime, but he was pretty damn sure he knew this place better than those bumbling idiots behind him.

Sandor wasn’t given to pansy rubbish like hoping and praying, but the wolfswood had always been kind to him, and some deep part of him wanted to trust that it would continue to be.

A bullet hissed past him, too close for comfort, and he growled low in his throat, immediately veering off to the right without bothering to look back. If he’d needed any proof that he’d softened in the winter town, surely this was it, leaving his house without a single bloody weapon on him. _You buggering idiot._

The very next moment, he found himself face down in the snow, sputtering and confused. Pushing himself up, he made it only a single step before his legs buckled under him once more like a newborn foal’s. Looking down, he saw the snow spattered crimson and realised he had been shot – the thigh most like, for it to be bleeding so much, and the moment the thought crossed his mind the pain began to pulse.

He turned over onto his back, gasping with the effort – better to die fighting than uselessly on his belly – but something abruptly flashed past him before he could even lay eyes on his pursuers. Something long, lean and lower to the ground than he would have thought possible for a creature so large. The wolves charged past him, six or seven in all, and very quickly shouts of panic began to split the air. A single gunshot rang out, but that was all he heard before the excited yips of triumphant wolves began to filter dimly through the trees.

He must have started hallucinating then, because he was almost certain that he heard a female voice call his name, and then the Maiden herself descended upon him. Her eyes were as blue as gems, her hair carmine and copper and every other shade of the fiery sunset. All else around her paled in comparison, his vision darkening at the edges until he couldn’t quite see anything but her. The gods must have been smiling upon him at last, to grant him such a vision to die to.

“Sandor!” She looked like she was shrieking his name, such a dainty little thing with her arms all aflutter like a helpless bird, her voice just as tiny, like he was hearing her through a long tunnel. “Don’t die, Sandor. Listen to me, _don’t die_.” Her voice was terribly strange, like music tracks that hadn’t been mixed quite right, each note sitting improperly over the other, but some of his vision seemed to clear, the darkness sliding away just a little.

“Think this is it.” The words rasped out of his throat as he fixed his eyes on the Maiden’s, thankful that he wasn’t bleeding out on his own in some dark alley like he had always assumed he would go. “Glad you’re here.” She even smelled lovely, like home, the cooling of the air as summer turned to autumn, the salty ocean breeze blowing inland. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, and he felt her hand grab his limp one, lifting it and pressing it to her chest.

“You are not dying,” she said fiercely, and his heart clenched at the terror lining her pale face. “There is help coming, Sandor, but you have to hold on. I can’t – please, just don’t leave me. I have no one else. I should never have made you forget. I had no right, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you safe.” Her hands were trembling as they held his, and as she spoke there was a sudden – _something_.

Something far in the back of his mind, the unwinding of a thread or the opening of a once-locked door, and behind it –

He groaned, fingers tightening around hers as his vision blurred once more. Her face flashed across his mind, raised and smiling. The feel of silky fabric sliding through his fingers. The soft yield of her lips against his. And the swell of his heart, pounding in his ears as he realised that he loved her and how could he have forgotten that?

“Sansa,” he whispered, but she was frozen, head cocked slightly. Brushing a kiss to his cheek, she set his hand down gently and vanished into the forest, noiseless as only a being of myth could be. He had time only to think _gods, Sansa_ before Jory was upon him and yelling for them to hurry with old Luwin in the snowmobile.

* * *

It took them months to discharge him, no matter how much he blustered and roared, and Sandor almost wished that someone in the damned town would show some fear of him. Instead, most of the locals he had come to know over the months came by to visit at least once, bringing along their own suspicious-smelling herbal remedies and lovingly-prepared homecooked meals. There was little he could complain about without sounding like an ungrateful bastard, and he found that he didn’t actually want that reputation back after all.

“The wolves came to your aid, boy,” Old Nan said kindly, probably the only person in the world who would ever think to call him that. “You’re one of us now. The north takes care of its own.” And that was that.

Through it all, he thought of little but Sansa, out there in the forest alone. Not _completely_ alone, he thought wryly, recalling the wolves that had leaped forward at her command. Guilt churned in his belly, snuffing out any anger he had been nurturing, as he thought of her watching so faithfully over him, yet isolated and unable to approach.

It was his own fucking fault. If he hadn’t overreacted like an idiot child throwing a tantrum, she wouldn’t have wiped his memory. He could have visited her often and told her about the village, all the little human curiosities she was sure to have wanted to learn about. He could have walked with her and held her hand. Hadn’t he visited the wolfswood hundreds of times over the past year even without any memory of the fairy he had gone and fallen in love with? So many opportunities, wasted.

He truly was an idiot.

He limped out into the woods the moment he was able, the moment Luwin gave him the most long-suffering expression the old man could muster and sighed that yes, although he would have loved to prescribe more bedrest for his most disagreeable patient, he supposed Sandor would not bleed out and die were he to walk on that leg for an extended period of time. His shoulder had mended almost perfectly, but the damn thigh began to ache like a constant scald even before he reached the woods, and he had to lean against the first tree he reached to exhale heavily, sweat peppering his forehead.

But Sansa was waiting, hesitantly stepping forward on light footsteps with an expression of such uncertainty on her face that it tore at his stupid soft heart.

“Come here,” he muttered, lurching forward ungracefully, and she flew into his arms, pressing her face to his chest for a long while. He stroked at her hair, held her tightly to him, inhaled her sweet scent, and everything he had ever thought he’d missed about her suddenly seemed trite in comparison to the miracle of her very presence.

Pulling back, she looked him up and down, hands trailing across his chest and shoulders, once again reminding him of an anxious, fluttering bird. “Are you well?” she asked, her voice small.

“Good as new,” he grunted, with a faint wry curl to one corner of his mouth, and then, as he glanced to the side uncomfortably – “I missed you.”

Her eyes shone at that, her smile tiny but lighting up her face all the same. Sandor blinked, dazzled, and once again found that she was wreathed with a strange sense of unreality. He almost expected her to vanish before his very eyes like a ghost, but she stayed, her expression warm and bright. She looked far better than when he had last seen her, not counting the time when he had been mildly delirious and close to death. There was a new ease about her, a resolute acceptance of her solitary existence that he found both brave and tragic.

Without another word, she slipped her hand into his and they walked, she matching her pace carefully to his uneven one. It was an unseasonably warm day, which meant only that patches of damp soil were actually visible through the thawing snow. Sandor almost expected the air to smell like the westerlands in spring, what with all the dirt and dew-wet bushes, but it didn’t – the smell of frost was diminished and nothing more. The critters seemed to be out in full force – a doe and her fawn crossed their path far up ahead, pausing to scrutinize them for a heartbeat.

It felt just like old times, the two of them journeying among the trees, the silence between them comfortable and well-worn.

“Sandor,” she murmured after a moment, and he felt her hesitation, her guilt and her misery, and he shook his head, squeezing her hand lightly.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice rough. “Don’t apologise. I don’t want to talk about that shit today. It was your fault, my fault, who cares. Just – tell me how you’ve been.” He kept his gaze fixed ahead, prickly and ill at ease, and somehow she knew without having to ask that he was speaking of the months they had spent apart.

Quite suddenly, she slowed to a stop and stepped before him, reaching up to catch his face between her palms. “I ran with the wolves and sang with the birds,” she said with a smile. “I danced with the deer and climbed with the squirrels. I have been well, I promise. The wonder of life has only just found me again, and I have no desire to leave it yet.” There were still wraiths in her eyes, shadows that would never quite leave, but the blue of her gaze as she looked at him was sweet and guileless.

“Good,” he muttered. “I’m glad.” He set a hand on her waist, stroking with his thumb the same way she was touching his face, feeling the warmth of her bare skin beneath her shift. She shivered beneath his touch and wound her arms about his neck instead, eyes sliding half-shut as she leaned up into him, her parted lips a soft petal-pink.

Sandor hesitated for only a moment, and then he kissed her hard, more hungrily than ever before. His hands moving to cup her thighs, he hoisted her up against him, staggering backwards for just a moment when his bad leg threatened to buckle under him. With a soft noise of concern, Sansa tried to pull back, her fingers unlocking from the back of his neck to brush his jaw instead, but he chased her mouth with his, tugging a low, breathy moan from deep in her throat as his fingers squeezed at her soft flesh.

“Sansa,” he whispered, trailing a series of small kisses down her throat, nipping at the juncture between neck and shoulder. She squirmed against him, panting hotly against his shoulder and twining her legs tighter against the small of his back. For a moment, she pressed down on his growing erection, and they both froze, him with his mouth still sucking against her shoulder, inhaling her breezy summer scent with every breath.

He had always known on an intellectual level – and a visual one as well – that she wore nothing beneath her little green slip, but that same knowledge felt very different when he was imagining her dampness through his jeans. His mind felt fuzzy with need, that red-hot roar of desire that he had never allowed himself to acknowledge fully until this moment. Spinning around, limping forward with his ugly, uneven gait, he pressed her back to the nearest tree, shifting so that he was supporting her with just one hand. The other fumbled with his fly, desperate, not even stopping to consider the general stupidity of exposing his privates in a snow-covered landscape.

“Sandor,” she said, and her voice sounded impossibly hoarse, almost unrecognizable from her usual lilting chirp. Lifting his face to hers, he pressed a soft kiss to her lips, feeling her wound tight as a bowstring in his arms. He swallowed a curse when the cold struck him mercilessly and groaned into her mouth instead, pushing forward eagerly against her wet warmth, sliding along her velvet folds and nudging insistently at her entrance.

Pulling away from his mouth with a moan, Sansa sucked in a shuddering breath. “Don’t,” she panted, and her voice was small, barely leaving her mouth. “Sandor, please. Please don’t.”

He slowed, blinking and dazed, looking her right in the face uncomprehendingly. Finally he registered the stiffness of her body and the near-painful press of her fingers into the meat of his shoulder as what he should have seen long before – sharp, visceral terror. He almost dropped her altogether in horror, only catching himself at the last moment to set her down gently on the ground. He felt dizzy and sick to his stomach as he stuffed himself back into his jeans with shaking hands, before wiping them clean against the rough fabric.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, stepping hastily away from her, feeling diseased and revolting. He truly was the lowest of the low – a criminal, a brute, and now almost a rapist.

Sansa stood unmoving, watching him with huge, frightened eyes set in a pale face, her arms tight around her middle as if to protect herself from him. She had stood like that once, he remembered, when she had told him how he had saved her, how he had given her reason to live.

_Gods._

“I’m sorry,” he said again, not knowing what else to say, not knowing if he should turn and leave or wait for her response. He didn’t want to leave her alone like this, frightened and surrounded by memories of the past, but he also didn’t know if his presence was at all wanted.

For a moment, she faded from view, not slowly like before, flickering at the corners like a dimming lantern, but all at once, like someone had taken a large eraser and swiped it across her form. It was quick, just a second where she vanished almost completely, and then she was standing there again, her mouth setting in a stubborn line.

“I am quite alright,” she said quietly, taking a small step towards him. “You merely frightened me.” She reached for him, but he flinched back.

“Frightened you?” Sandor repeated, his scoff cutting in its derision. “I almost had you right there and then without any self-control like an animal. You should be running for the hills, screaming your pretty little head off.”

Sansa frowned at him, and right then Sandor couldn’t imagine her screaming at anything, much less running. She looked very much like she would give as good as she got in a fair fight, this fiery little spitfire of a magical fairy, and it made him adore her more than ever.

“We shall not let it get so far again,” she said quite primly, although there was the faintest hint of pink beginning to dust her cheeks. “At least, until I feel that I am ready, which I hope to be – someday. For now, you could just…kiss me?” Her voice lilted up hopefully at the end, and Sandor shivered at the foxy glint to her eyes as she moved closer, hands outstretched until they landed lightly on his shoulders.

“Careful,” he warned, and he saw the slight soft curl of her mouth when she registered the tremor in his voice. He kept his hands on her waist this time, stroking softly up and down her hip. Her mouth was wonderfully sweet, as if she feasted on berries all day, and he found that tasting her slowly as she mewed her satisfaction against his lips was almost better than anything else they could have done. He could have been struck dead right at that moment without a single regret in the world.

“You should go,” she said at last as she drew away, flushed and ethereal. “Your leg – I can tell that it pains you.” He huffed, lips twisting unhappily, but he could hardly deny that she was right. Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure if he was going to be able to make it back to his cottage, but Sansa walked with him back to the edge of the wolfswood and gave him a last kiss for fortification, and somehow he made it back safely anyway.

* * *

Sandor Clegane gained a rather large passion for camping outdoors in the time following his accident. Most of the locals attributed it to a newfound piety for the old gods, but besides the man himself, only one other being in the north knew exactly why he had all but started living out of his tent in the forest, and that being was currently nestled in his arms in the dead of night, her soft breaths whistling out near his ear. The glow of her hair cast soft shadows against the canvas, and he watched them dance with the darkness until he fell asleep.

Sometimes, often, he wondered how he had ever become so lucky. Trudging into the forest after a long day at work and a hot dinner at the pub, he lit a lamp to light his way, following the familiar path to the place he had left his heart. Sansa wasn’t always there, and he would collapse in the tent on his own like a downed bull, utterly exhausted, but at some point before he slept she would appear, sliding in under his arm with a contented sigh. She brought with her the smell of blooming flowers, of honey and loam and petrichor.

These days, Sansa smelled very much like spring.

“I think it’s good, you know,” he said one day, stretching and squinting against the pale orange cast of dawn illuminating the tent. “That you did what you did. We’re both in a good place now. Might be that we needed the time apart.”

Sansa hummed an acknowledgment, but it wasn’t quite an agreement. She had never truly forgiven herself for taking his memories, no matter how many times he insisted that he no longer even thought of it.

Rolling onto his side so he could look fully upon her, Sandor tugged at a long curl of red-gold hair, letting the strands slide through his fingers and catching them just before they escaped. “I’m in love with a buggering _fairy_ ,” he mused. “Of all the damn things in this world.”

And then he rolled once more, propping himself up on his elbows and trapping Sansa between them, the side of his hip pressed tightly against hers. He smirked, feeling his scars pull tight, and then her arms were around him, pulling his face down to her breasts, where he nuzzled in roughly, licking and nipping through the gauzy fabric.

Arching further into his touch, she laughed in a sudden, ringing burst of sweet delight, and it truly was just as beautiful a sound as he had always imagined it to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fairy facts!
> 
>   1. Fairies fade/flicker out of this plane of existence when they are emotionally distressed. It's a defense mechanism even though they exist primarily on the usual plane i.e. the one humans can see - but it can be countered with the application of iron. The closely-related nymphs/dryads exist fully on an alternate plane of existence and are invisible to humans unless they somehow have a third eye.
>   2. Fairies emit a constant low-level mesmer that neutralises potential hostility/engenders protective feelings in unwary humans, even when unconscious. Another defense mechanism, but one that is fairly easily thrown off once the humans know what's up. The intentional mesmer is of course far more powerful.
>   3. A fairy's well-being, both physical and emotional, can be quite accurately determined via their smell. A healthy, content fairy will smell like spring, with deteriorating levels being summer, autumn, and finally winter for a fairy that is near death.
> 

> 
> I basically didn't include any of my world-building in the actual fic lol but these were some of the more major pointers I had in mind while writing.


End file.
